Okay, I really should update more...

So, here's the update:

Madman's part 3 in now swiftly approaching 10,000 words. (Cool, ain't it?)

I'm 9 chapters into Human Action, By Ludwig von Mises, which is a great basis for the founding principal that is guiding the Madman story.
I'm also a few chapters into Butler Shaffer's Boundaries of Order, which I'm finding to be the perfect reflection of Madman, written in an Academic sense. I recommend it to everyone who thinks they might enjoy reading Madman, or has any thoughts on my Inscriptions post.

I'm finding more and more than the real world concepts for Madman are far larger than even I imagined, even at the beginning of this year.
I'm really getting the feeling that I'm onto something special here, and it's pretty intimidating, considering that this story began simply as a way of coping with teen angst when I was 14.
I'm going to need to revise my goals for SDI, because the more research I do, the more I formulate the history of Madman, I'm finding that there is more I NEED to say. Madman was never meant to exceed 180 pages at first, no I'm afraid I won't be able to keep it bellow a thousand.
So my research into literature is taking me back to the most epic series in Fantasy history; The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan. How did he pull this off?
I've also been looking at the works of the great Alan Moore, who penned Watchmen and V for Vendetta; two stories that profoundly affected my life.

I've plowed through the audio book of Defending the Undefendable, by Walter Block, which is a beautifully dark, funny, set of essays completely destroying the common misconceptions of the nature of Drug Dealers, Chauvanists, Curmudgeons, Pimps and Prostitutes and so much more. Block is an Austro-libertarian, just like Mises and Shaffer, yet he continues to push libertarian philosophy deeper and deeper into the Anarchy, which myself, and my author-hero Moore consider to be the only ethical state of society.
If we are in a war for freedom, Block is the genius scientist, sitting in his lab designing our newest weapons.

I'm also working on a couple of side projects at the moment. I have several pieces nearly ready to be posted on Vokoff, and I'm composing a story I'm dubbing the "Anti-Edward Cullen" because I'm so fucking sick of panzy-arsed, pretty boy vampires parading around in our popular mythos.

Another Journal Post

Ok so here's what I've been up to lately.

Worked on some art for the comics.
Got to almost 7 thousand words in part 3 of the novel.
Got some help with making a promotional poster.
Did a whole heap of research which involves; Reading several graphic novels. Watching a few interviews with Alan Moore (on youtube just type in Alan Moore, and I've probably watched them all.) My usual skim through of all the articles on lewrockwell.com (daily.) Downloaded several books and audio books on US financial an political history from mises.org and am wading my way through the book Human Action, which lends a lot to what I'm doing with the scientific and phylosophical elements of Madman.
On the story telling side, I've been watching Buffy and Angel, mostly because I think it's awesome and it has great dialogue.

Reflecting for SDI

After a mammoth amount of writing on Saturday, I am two and a half chapters into part 3 of the Madman Novel. Which for the record is about 4,500 words at this stage. This brings the total word count to roughly 42,000. This is not really all that much, considering the target length will be more than double that.

I've been both bemoaned for, and told to, have a word count target. Strangely, the professionals I've consulted have all given me a different target to aim for, while the laymen tend to say do whatever works artistically.

I say, why not do both? I know that parts 1 and 2 are too thin at the present because I've been writing this for the last 4 years and I know how much information I need for part 3 to work.
When i set out writing, I was going to structure Madman as 9 part story and part 1 at that stage was around 10,000 words, so I had a full length novel right there.

I then began part 2, which was racing toward 20,000 words and made me feel like I should do Madman as a 3 part novel, with 2 sequels. As a went on in part 2 I realized part one was a horribly mediocre effort so I went back and filled in the blank spaces. Both parts then grew and grew until I felt part 1 was solid.
Then the dreaded writers block struck and I was left with a solid part 1 and a part 2 that was too thin by comparison.
I found myself caught in my thoughts about the minor characters' back stories, while the Madman rotted in his cell. The story stopped being Madman and became Madman and Acquaintances.
So, after having Madman dissed by my first prospective agent, I thought "Fuck it. Everything she hated about what I wrote, is exactly what I was aiming for." So I realized I was on both the right and wrong track at the same time.
Her complaints were that the story was too confusing for her senile head to follow, and lacked substance beyond violence. Considering that I had set out to hide the substance within the violence, and that the story is meant to be confusing at first, I wasn't too upset.
But confusing books don't sell. So that meant that if I wanted to keep my integrity and make a work of fiction that people liked I needed a bigger, fatter, grittier back story for the entire WORLD that Madman is set in.

Now, my SDI project is developing and "selling" that world. This involves creating the back stories, fleshing out the philosophy, the science and the history that are key to the story, and placing all of this in the Madman related media.

And this ties into my point about word count. I need roughly 90-120 thousand words to have a complete story. I know this, because I need to disperse all of the fictional lore throughout the novel. I'm doing this by first, writing part 3, then going back so everything fits together. Then I'm going to go over the entire novel many times, adding and subtracting until it is finished. I need the ending, before I can flesh out the middle.

As for the comics. They are Cannon and they are the back stories I cannot or will not include in the Novel. The comics are designed to lay a ground work for the book, and are also there to make up for compromises in style that I had to make in the book.

Journal post

I'm having problems with twitter at the moment, so I thought I'd post my 140 character entry here.

Looked at Print On Demand companies. Now going to type journal post.

Done.

Okay, so I looked at a couple online POD companies. only CMYK.com gives me a direct quote for the comic series and they're a good $1000 cheaper than the Franklin Press here in hobart, but I'm liking th look of BookPal.com, as they do promotions as well as POD. I'm reconsidering my business plan. It seems to be a better idea to print 25-100 copies of issue #1, and then collect orders, printing an extra 500, or so for personal sales, and promotional give aways.

As far as writing goes, I've written the basic plan for issue 1, and am currently back working on the novel for a bit.

Research

I suppose I better include my research in my journal keeping.
So here's a link to an article on Wage and Price Controls in the Ancient World.

How is this relevant? Wage and labour controls are a key factor in the collapse of the Californian State, which is the major political event in the early stages of the Madman story.

SDI

Because I believe in making less work for myself, I've decided to mesh my blogging and writing "career" with my education. The one catch is that I need to keep a journal to prove I'm actually doing work for the Student Directed Inquiry course.

So now I'm going to be further polluting my dumping ground for fantastical-Madman-related nonsense, with the realities of creating the Madman World.

So as my first entry, I'm going to outline exactly how far I've got with creating the world.
I have:
Written a rough draft of part 1 of the Novel.
Written a rough draft of issue one of the comic series... Oh yeah, I haven't announced that to the world yet *SSSSHHHH*
Done all the work on this here blog.
Enlisted an Illustrator; the master Nick Sinnet, otherwise known as THE WARMASTER.
Acquired the contact details of a printer.
Come up with a reasonable plan to fund the printing of the comics.
Sold my soul to Satan, in return for the presence of mind to pull this off.

Learning to Swim

A young boy pulled a burning branch from the searing bonfire and trotted over to his family, careful not to drop his flaming torch. His father grasped his hands, firming his son's grip on the branch. The blaring music fell silent, as did the masses of people. They lowered the branch to a damp puddle in the asphalt...

~

Calvin climbed from the Sun Angel's swimming pool, leaving behind an amorphous collation of redness floating within the water, clearly visible against the pale blue glow of the pool light. He stalked, dripping, to the entrance of the empty hotel. In the space of a day the entire of those in residence had fled. The staff were gone as well, many likely joining in with the rioters. He stepped over the body of a janitor, who he had surely killed. The televisions in the lobby all gave visuals of the rioting and the subsequent battle; gunfire intertwined with the cries of “Morningstar.”

He rode the elevator to the roof, still dripping reddish-brown water from his clothes. He stepped out and threw his shirt off onto the base of the Angel. Stepping up to the railing he stared out over the city, noting the occasional smoking building and the almost total lack of moving vehicles on the streets. A streak of flame caught his eye...

~

“You to wha-?” Brian was cut off in mid protest by Jenna tugging his attention toward the reason for the sudden cessation of the celebratory din. A man and a boy touched flame to fuel and with a deafening woosh the street adjacent to the one on which the crowed was standing burst into flame...

~

David Carlson sat safe inside his grandparents down town home playing with his pencil crayons. First he drew the star in black, lines intersecting to make five triangular points that surrounded a small pentagon. Then he drew over the star with a thin wavy line of blue. Finally he took his orange pencil and coloured in the flames.

“There!” he said. “Just like I saw in my dream.”